1. Field of the Invention
This invention relate to a culture medium and a preparation method thereof, and particularly to a cutting cultivation medium and a preparation method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cutting propagation method is the most popular cultivation method in a fast vegetative propagation technique of plants. Most plants, especially woody plants, use a cutting method to facilitate large scale, fast, and low-cost propagation, and thus providing a large number of plant seedlings for the market. In the cutting propagation method, a medium significantly affects cultivation time in nursery and survival time after nursery of cutting seedlings.
However, a conventional cutting propagation method uses a loosen mixture disposed in an aperture disk and composed of one or more materials as a medium, and then cuttings are inserted in the medium for cultivation. Since the medium is loosen and an aperture of the aperture disk is very small, as some roots grow from the cuttings, they cannot be transplanted timely after nursery since they are not combined (intertwisted) with the medium. If the seedling is pulled out from the aperture disk, a root of the seedling will lose wrapping of the medium, and lose water and ingredients. In this condition, new roots exposed in the air will grow old and lose activity soon, and the whole seedling will wilt due to dewatering. Therefore, for a normal cutting cultivation method, nursery time of the cutting seedling is extended so that more roots grow, and roots in the aperture of the aperture disk are intertwisted with the medium by cutting the roots so that exposal roots occurred during nursery are reduced. Although this method reduces some of the exposal roots, it cannot eliminate the whole exposal roots. More importantly, this method extends a nursery time of the seeding and sacrifices best transplanting time thereof. Cutting seedlings produced by the method feature long cultivation time, high cost, damaged roots during nursery, short survival time after nursery and before transplanting, and a long rejuvenation period of more than one week.